Advent Again – day 13

“we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home…”

from “One Today” by Richard Blanco

One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.

We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars
hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it—together.

starsgavin

Untitled by Gavin Jantjes

 

Advent Again – day 10

“so that all may see and know…”

 

[Psalm #5] from 99 Psalms by SAID, translated from the German by Mark S Burrows

(Brewster, Mass.: Paraclete Press, 2013)

 

lord

let me be a water puddle

that mirrors your heavens

and murmurs your prayers

so that the cicadas might understand me

puddlemcescher

“Puddle” by M.C. Escher

show yourself o lord

even if you have no other choice

than to come in the fierce coursing of blood

and take in the refugees

because every fleeing ends in your eye

even if those who flee forget you in their time of need

because only those who doubt in you

seek you

 

Advent Again – day 8

“a branch shall grow…”

the-tree-of-life

“The Tree of Life” by Gustav Kimt

“Tree” by Jane Hirschfield

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books—

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

Advent Again – day 7

“What shall I cry?”

 

from “Advice to a Prophet” by Richard Wilbur

 

When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,

Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,

Not proclaiming our fall but begging us

In God’s name to have self-pity,

 

Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,

The long numbers that rocket the mind;

Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,

Unable to fear what is too strange.

 

Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race.

How should we dream of this place without us?—

The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,

A stone look on the stone’s face?

 

Speak of the world’s own change. Though we cannot conceive

Of an undreamt thing, we know to our cost

How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened by frost,

How the view alters….

cityscape-by-jeremy-mann

Painting by Jeremy Mann